GitHub will kick off the new year by allowing free users of the code repository service to maintain private projects, which should encourage smaller developers wary of its new corporate parent to stick around.

GitHub has always had a free tier that developers can use to store and manage their code, but the company required users to pay $7 a month if they wanted to keep their code private. GitHub Free will now allow users working on projects with up to three collaborators to maintain unlimited private code repositories, it plans to announce later on Monday.

“We really want our products to reflect the journey of the developer regardless of where they are in their career,” said Kathy Simpson, senior director of product management at GitHub, in explaining the new changes. As a self-taught developer, Simpson would have liked to be able to experiment with code in private during her learning phase before deciding whether or not to make that code public, she said.

GitHub also plans to combine its Business Cloud and Enterprise pricing tiers into a single tier called GitHub Enterprise that’s intended for larger companies that want to host GitHub on their own infrastructure or use it as a cloud service. The new GitHub Enterprise service was designed for companies operating hybrid cloud environments, which represents a growing number of shops these days.

[Editor’s note: This post was updated with additional information.]

Tom Krazit, GeekWire's Cloud & Enterprise Editor, covered technology for news organizations including IDG, CNET, and paidContent before serving as executive editor of Gigaom and the Structure conference series. Reach him at tom@geekwire.com and follow him @tomkrazit.